As If Had Read

The idea of a tag "As If Had Read" started as a riff off of riffs with
David Weinberger at Reboot 2008 regarding the "to read" tag
that is prevalent in many social bookmarking sites. But, the "as if had
read" is not as tongue-in-cheek at the moment, but is a moment of ah ha!

I have been using DevonThink on my
Mac for 5 or more years. It is a document, note, web page, and general content
catch all that is easily searched. But, it also pulls out relevance to other items
that it sees as relevant. The connections it makes are often quite impressive.

My Info Churning Patterns

I have promised for quite a few years that I
would write-up how I work through my inbound content. This process changes a lot,
but it is back to a settled state again (mostly). Going back 10 years or more I
would go through my links page and
check all of the links on it (it was 75 to 100 links at that point) to see if there
was something new or of interest.

But, that changed to using a feedreader (I
used and am back to using Net News
Wire on Mac as it has the features I love and it is fast and I can skim 4x to
5x the content I can in Google Reader (interface and design matters)) to pull in
400 or more RSS feeds that I would triage. I would skim the new (bold) titles and
skim the content in the reader, if it was of potential interest I open the link
into a browser tab in the background and just churn through the skimming of the
1,000 to 1,400 new items each night. Then I would open the browser to read the
tabs. At this stage I actually read the content and if part way through it I don't
think it has current or future value I close the tab. But, in about 90 minutes I
could triage through 1,200 to 1,400 new RSS feed items, get 30 to 70 potential
items of value open in tabs in a browser, and get this down to a usual 5 to 12
items of current or future value. Yes, in 90 minutes (keeping focus to sort the out
the chaff is essential). But, from this point I would blog or at least put these
items into Delicious and/or Ma.gnolia or
Yahoo MyWeb 2.0 (this service was insanely amazing and was years ahead of its time
and I will write-up its value).

The volume and tools have changed over time.
Today the same number of feeds (approximately 400) turn out 500 to 800 new items
each day. I now post less to Delicious and opt for DevonThink for 25 to 40 items
each day. I stopped using DevonThink (DT) and opted for Yojimbo and then
Together.app as they had tagging and I could add my context (I found my own context
had more value than DevonThink's contextual relevance engine). But, when
DevonThink added tagging it became an optimal service and I added my archives from
Together and now use DT a lot.

Relevance of As if Had Read

But, one
of the things I have been finding is I can not only search within the content of
items in DT, but I can quickly aggregate related items by tag (work projects, long
writing projects, etc.). But, its incredible value is how it has changed my
information triage and process. I am now taking those 30 to 40 tabs and doing a
more in depth read, but only rarely reading the full content, unless it is current
value is high or the content is compelling. I am acting on the content more quickly and putting it into DT. When I need to recall information I use the search to find content and then pull related content closer. I not only have the item I was seeking, but have other related content that adds depth and breath to a subject. My own personal recall of the content is enough to start a search that will find what I was seeking with relative ease. But, were I did a deeper skim read in the past I will now do a deeper read of the prime focus. My augmented recall with the brilliance of DevonThink works just as well as if I had read the content deeply the first time.